Publick Nuisance

The secret files of the Ventureverse

This is because we are desperately racing the clock to edit each new episode in time for broadcast, and...

THE VENTURE BROS. SEASON 4 HAS BEGUN PRODUCTION!!!

Yup, the character/prop/background design teams and production team started work at World Leaders several weeks ago...and we didn't even have a script for them. I turned in my first script (Ep. 40, "Handsome Ransom," if you're keeping track) a little over a week late, keeping the artists busy in the interim with judiciously doled out spoonfuls of design assignments for characters and locations I was pretty sure would make it into the final draft. And Doc is just now turning in the second episode of the season...which we're supposed to finish designing in like three days. Neither of these scripts, by the way, are for next season's premiere episode. As usual, we probably won't get to that one for a little while...

We have never tried this business of overlapping seasons before, and I must say it is hell on all of us. Nevertheless, I'm quite pleased with what we've all turned out so far on both the art and writing fronts. Episode 40 is already being storyboarded and we're set to record the voice tracks next week, keeping our fingers crossed in hopes of getting a special guest voice to play a major role, which I will not spoil.

Now I have less than a week to get the next script in. Guess who will be late again?

If I hadn't been so busy, I'd probably have written a bunch of stuff about all the episodes we've shown so far. Like about the various songs we tried unsuccessfully to license for the last montage scene of "The Invisible Hand of Fate..."

...Or how all the photos at the beginning of "The Buddy System" are of Doc, me or my brother circa 1977. Because you can't put pictures of other people who were children in 1977 on TV unless you can track them down and get them to sign a release form, no matter how public a place your dad snapped the photos in. So take that, "Josh," you could have been on TV, but Noooooooo...

...Or about all the real and fictitious celebrities hanging out at Jonas Venture's house in the key party scene of "Dr. Quymn, Medicine Woman..."

...or how Dr. Entmann in this week's episode was recorded three different times by two different actors, after we were turned down by a third semi-celebrity (who shall remain nameless because he apologized profusely)...

...but I guess I'll save that stuff for the DVD commentaries, which someone is bound to make us start recording soon, because we don't have enough to do. Then they'll bleep it all out for legal reasons.

In other news, Ep. 33: "What Goes Down, Must Come Up," is now available online at adultswim.com for your viewing pleasure, and will of course be broadcast in its full glory this Sunday night at 11:30pm EST. It's another solo effort by yours truly (and a weird, dark one at that) and features the voice of our beloved "Art Director" (I prefer "Storyboard/Design Guru," but apparently that doesn't fly on Linkedin) Stephen DeStefano, whose lovely blog can be found by clicking here, and who probably speaks in that accent at the office roughly 38% of the time.

Next week's episode will be Doc Hammer's "Tears of a Sea Cow," the working title of which was "Murder O'Clock" just because.

The network tells me our ratings are excellent this season, with each episode scoring higher than the highest-rated episode of any previous season. The Family Guy continues to kick our ass, of course, because it would seem many many many more people would prefer to watch a Family Guy rerun for the tenth time than a brand new episode of our show. That, or a lot of people go to bed at 11:29 (EST) on Sunday nights.

And Shirt Club continues to rock the worlds of our overworked interns, and the bodies of fandom...

This season is definitely good, but I suspect your ratings are the result of your fantastic seaston two finale. That two-episode set was the perfect combination of interesting, engaging plot and complete off-the-wall insanity. I think you're still reaping the rewards of last season's awesomeness. So far, I haven't seen anything this season that I like nearly as much as the highlights from last season, but you've hit a certain base-line level of quality that you hadn't achieved before, which will keep a lot of people coming back.

But secretly I'm hoping for something as funny as the Grand Galactic Inquisitor to show up again.